Fillipo Neri

Yesterday was the feast day of Saint Phillip Neri.

There was a time in my life when I was much influenced by Phillip. And then I stopped being so. It never occurred to me to wonder why.

Yesterday, on his feast day, my Bishop decided to highlight this quote from Phillip:

If we find nothing in the world to please us, we ought to be pleased by this very not finding anything to please us.

Try to imagine what it would be like to live that philosophy. I keep thinking, Did Jesus find nothing to be please him in this world? And I think, there are a lot of people in this world, should we be pleased if we found that none of the people in the world pleased us?

Wine pleases me. Cheese pleases me. So do bread, flowers, coffee, clean sheets, sunshine, books, songs and so many other things that I couldn't begin to list them all. These things please me so much it strikes me as a travesty of morality that anyone could not find something to like in the world. It's excusable as a symptom of depression of course but if you find yourself thinking that nothing in the world pleases you, you should do something about it. Only someone who is sick could think such a thing.

I should add that of the many things in the world that please, women please me the most. They don't have to do anything in particular. Just being present is enough to please me. That said, it doesn't take me long to imagine taking pleasure in more than just their presence.

That's the step that seems to have worried Phillip the most. He used to gather young men around him and spend hours with them praying through the hours of night when temptation was strongest. His big struggle was not—contrary to what the quote above suggests—being unable to find anything to please him in the world. His struggle was to overcome a desire for the things of this world, particularly the things to be found in the freedom of the city.

He was a big promoter of the use of contemplation as a way to overcome temptation. In his later years he read only two books: the Bible and the Summa Theologica. And there we can see his primary influence: Phillip took the spirit of monastic life and applied it to life outside the monastery.

Was this a good thing? More this afternoon.